Abstract
Hydro-elasticity is important in the evaluation of a category of wave energy converters (WEC). In this paper, the hydro-elastic response of a bulge wave energy converter is examined by the implementation of a two-dimensional potential theory. The numerical implementation of the Frank Close-Fit method (FCFM) defines hydrodynamic coefficients and incident wave loads, where computation time is reduced with respect to the three-dimensional boundary element methods (BEM). These coefficients are included by a two-way coupling in the equation of motion for bending and bulging, which defines the interaction between incident waves, radiated waves and wall deformations. The results are compared to analytical and numerical methods and this analysis reveals that the addition of the FCFM to a modal analysis is valid to use for hydro-elastic problems in bulge wave energy converters.